ThyssenKrupp Magazin

56 NEWSTEELBODY
tional auto bodies. “Extremely important in this is the expert engineering.
It was the only way to optimize all the advantages of the steel,”
whose strengths can perhaps best be demonstrated with a figure: the
walls of some parts of the NewSteelBody are only 0.9 millimeter thick.
That’s barely 0.035 of an inch.
Opel showed an unusual openness with the project, making all of
the Zafira’s engeineering data from the Computer Aided Design (CAD)
process available, much to Osburg’s delight. “That is very rare, because
it makes the entire car transparent,” he explains.
But the data was extremely important and valuable, because it
provided absolutely realistic technical values for the rigidity and the
crash test results of the NewSteelBody. The ThyssenKrupp Steel team
went to work and designed the entire body by computer; as is now common
in car design, computer-simulated crash tests using the latest
standards were carried out to test stability. In the end, a fully built, lifesize
quarter-section was completed for presentation to IAA visitors and
ThyssenKrupp Steel customers. “In five years, it could be in line pro-
High strength and an exquisite shape
duction,” Osburg says enthusiastically. And in the interval? The time
will be used to develop a new vehicle, although an advantage of the
NewSteelBody concept is that its use is not limited to being installed in
its entirety in a car specially designed for it; it can be incorporated in different
parts and components that can be introduced gradually into cars
that are already in production.
COMPREHENSIVE KNOW-HOW ON NEW MATERIALS
About half the NewSteelBody consists of stamped parts, and the other
half of sealed, thin hollow sections. A thinning process is used for the
body side members, front and back, as well as the roofrail: thin-walled
tubes are prepared to the approximate size needed and then pressed
into their precise shape by hydroforming, a process whereby water is
injected from the inside at extremely high pressure.
The body side members at the rear are made out of “tailored
tubes” constructed by combining steels of different strengths, depending
on the load, whereas the front side members are produced from
TK Magazine | 1 | 2004 |